


Red String Sashiko (Decorative Mending for the Darkest Timeline)

by Seiberwing



Category: Lupin III
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Angst around Physical Disabilities, Blood, Depression, F/M, Homelessness, Is Lupin Still Burning?, Lupin Polygang, M/M, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts, Timeline Shenanigans, alcohol use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: Ever feel like something's missing? You know, besides your job, your gun, your functioning right arm, your sense of purpose, or your reason to live?Something's been stolen from former gunman Daisuke Jigen's life, and the more time he spends with the ICPO inspector who'd scraped him off a Parisian street corner and given him a place to stay, the more Jigen needs to know what it is.---Inspired by/based off the alternate timeline created in the "Is Lupin Still Burning?" TV special, where time traveling dickbag and cape aficionado Kyosuke Mamou systematically removes Lupin's friendships with his gang from the timeline, leaving him alone and his friends trapped in unpleasant lives. We got about 10 minutes of that in the special and it was hardly enough, so instead here's 13k words of all that lost angst potential.
Relationships: Background Goemon Ishikawa/Fujiko Mine, Implied Lupin Polygang, Jigen Daisuke/Zenigata Kouichi
Comments: 47
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this one last year, before I realized we were already in the Darkest Timeline, and my productivity kinda came to a halt. Hoping this will impel me to at least finish it, if not do a good job with the finishing, so apologies in advance if I wind up going back to change anything.

Jigen's right arm ached, and that meant the weather was about to go sour.

Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.

Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.

Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.

"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.

"Don't worry about it," he said before the man could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, he'd run off into the crowd. Jigen huddled up in his corner, lanky limbs folded around himself to brace against the cold, and didn't think about the guy again.

\---  
Several hours later, Jigen had another target to be paranoid about. The big, broad-shouldered man in the long coat had been around the plaza a few times before before. Jigen had first called out to him in Japanese, hoping a little taste of home might make him more charitable - sure, there were Japanese-Parisians, but this guy definitely had the tourist look about him. The gamble had paid off in dividends - every night this week the man had come by, offering him an 'extra' sandwich from the office that Jigen knew damn well had been purchased at the cafe around the corner.

"I hear there's gonna be a cold snap tonight," the man said, standing with his hands in his pockets while Jigen worked his way through a ham and cheese.

"Huh. Good to know."

"You got a place to be?"

"Yeah." 

"...that place got a heater?"

"I'll be fine."

The man took a long drag of his cigarette and stared out into the streetlights as they lit up the dimming courtyard. He didn't look like he believed Jigen, or had overlooked that the answer to his question hadn't technically been 'yes'. There were shelters to go to, but they were loud and stank and people tried to jack your stuff. Even worse, they had other humans in them and Jigen didn't feel like he could deal with a mass of other humans right now. He could barely deal with himself on a good day.

"Look…"

Jigen braced himself for the man to recommend some government or charity service, as if Jigen hadn't fucking thought of that. He wasn't even supposed to be in this country anymore and his passport had long since vanished. If he had to be on the street somewhere, at least the food was better here than in America. Fewer guns, too.

Instead, the man's next words came out in a long single-breath rush. "Do you want to spend the night at my place?" 

"Eh?"

The man turned his big, round eyes on Jigen. 

"I've seen you out here before. I don't know your story but I don't want to just walk out here and find you frozen to death. And I got some frozen dinners in the fridge, and a couch."

This felt like a trap. The guy was big, bigger than Jigen, and if he was the type that murdered hobos and put them in his basement for amusement Jigen wouldn't be able to stop him.

...Jigen also wasn't entirely sure he cared. He rose slowly, unsteadily to his feet and gathered up the rucksack that formed the bulk of his possessions. When he grunted his assent the man actually looked surprised. Maybe he realizes what a weird request it was too.

"Don't actually know what your name is, though."

"Zenigata Koichi." There was a beat as he waited for Jigen to reply in kind.

Jigen toyed with the idea of giving a pseudonym or just denying him the name at all, but again, who really cared? The guy might put arsenic in his coffee later and then it wouldn't matter anyway. He admitted, after some delay, to being Jigen Daisuke.

"You're...American, yes? Is English easier for you?"

"I'm fine with whatever."

"I'm best with Japanese, but English is useful. More people are likely to know it if there's nowhere else you overlap, and I have to be abroad a lot."

"Huh." 

Zenigata kept taking peeks at him as they walked down the dimming streets, as if he was expecting something. Jigen kept his head down, brim of his hat hiding his eyes. At least if the guy slit his throat in the night he'd be able to sleep comfortably.

\--

The hotel room was one of those residential ones, the kind that was basically an apartment with its own little kitchen and such. It also looked more like the scene of a break-in and subsequent explosion, with discarded clothing on every available piece of furniture and papers scattered from kitchen counter to coffee table. 

There was, as promised, a couch, and Zenigata quickly moved to scoot a few piles of laundry off it, mumbling an apology for the mess.He talked his way through a tour as if the entire room couldn't be seen from a single point.

"Coffeemaker's there, and bathroom's back there if you want a shower. My bedroom's through that door, I'll just stuff this in here, you can put your stuff in the closet--"

"Yeah, yeah, sure." 

After some leftover Chinese and a shower (because yeah, Jigen knew he stank) and some mouthwash quietly swiped from the bathroom drawer, Jigen found a set of spare clothes laid out for him. All of them were too big, but he at least accepted the loan of a shirt that fit on him like a child wearing his father's clothes.

The entire time Zenigata kept talking, and Jigen offered little but grunts in reply. It was hard to remember how to hold a conversation, as if he'd been moving through molasses and now someone was asking him to sprint. None of it related to anything - Zenigata talked about the weather, about Paris compared to other cities he'd visited, about his thoughts on America and the way they did things, a few opinions on local politics that Jigen had no reason to care about because he wasn't even a legal voter here. Or a legal anything here. But Zenigata didn't need to know that.

"Remind me what you do for work again?" he grunted, as he watched the man clean up more papers from the sofa. 

"Ah...inspector. I'm with ICPO." He looked almost embarrassed about it. 

"Wait, you're a cop?"

Zenigata held up his hands. "Don't--look, this isn't like some extended sting operation, okay? If you had to do a few shady things to survive, it's not my business. I got way bigger fish to deal with."

Jigen's hand brushed his right elbow. "Charitable," he said under his breath, head down. Jigen's crimes were a bit heavier than shoplifting and public loitering, but Zenigata didn't need to know that. "I'm gonna sleep now."

"Okay. Let me know if you need anything!" He waved with the papers in his hand and backed out of the conversation, into the bedroom. Jigen curled up on the couch and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself to sleep. 

Sleep and with no dreams, please, he thought, like he was putting in an order at a restaurant, and then pulled the blanket up over his head.

Jigen didn't mind nightmares, you at least felt grateful to be awake once you came out of those. The dreams were so much worse because he woke up feeling unbearably, painfully, empty. The feeling that something was missing - lost, stolen, cut out with a knife - lingered after rousing, sometimes for hours. He didn't always remember what the dreams were but sometimes they felt more real than the world around him. Certainly they were always more beautiful. 

This one...he'd been in a car, driving over a bridge somewhere in San Francisco, and the man had leaned over to light his cigarette. and smiled so beautifully that he'd pulled his hat down to hide the way his eyes misted up. 

He lay still for a while, wondering if he'd woken his host up, until the sun rose enough to illuminate a note left on the coffee table.

 _Sorry. Work called me in early._

There were arrows directing him to the location of food, as if the fridge and coffeemaker were hard to find, and a spare room key taped to the paper. Jigen, again, considered whether he should just rob the place and get out, and what kind of idiot left a complete stranger alone in his hotel room. Idiot, or lunatic, or malevolent entity.

Still, robbing the guy just felt mean. And it was below freezing outside. Jigen lay on the couch for a while, idly watching tv and sipping coffee.

The dreams weren't too bad for the next few days. Barely a dull ache, sometimes not even there at all. Zenigata was always chatty when he came home but never about anything relevant. He seemed to want to just fill the air with chatter, any kind at all, to drown out...silence, maybe. Enough letting the man run his mouth revealed that he had an ex-wife, and that his work was frustrating, but he always swerved away from discussion of either topic before they got into territory too dangerous. For his part, Jigen said nothing about his past beyond when he started living on the streets of Paris. No reason to ruin a good thing before its time, and eventually Zenigata would have to wise up and kick him out.

Eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has content warnings for suicidal ideation and alcoholism, and discussion of such matters.

The fourth night in, the dreams got too bad to ignore.

Zenigata found Jigen sitting on the kitchen floor, with Zenigata's service weapon cradled in his hands like a child with a baby doll. A bottle of wine, mostly empty, was on the floor next to him. The lack of an accompanying wineglass indicated he'd been swigging directly out of the bottle. 

Jigen's eyes were reddened from tears and a bit glazed when he looked up. 

"Hey….just take it easy, okay, Jigen?" Zenigata held his hands up in classic 'pacifying the crazy with a weapon' style.

Jigen looked at him, then down to the gun in his hand. "Took the bullets out of it," he mumbled. "Not gonna...not gonna use it. I just wanted to hold it." His right hand coiled around the gun and rubbed the side of the trigger, never slipping around to touch the front of it.

"You...wanted to hold the gun." 

"Yeah. Just for a bit. It felt….it felt nice. Missed the feeling. The weight." His sentences came out in slow, forceful chunks, as if each one had to be carefully constructed and spat out before the next one could be thought up.

He held the gun up and aimed it at the fridge. His right arm managed to hold steady for two seconds before it started to shiver. 

"There was this guy. Wanted to duel. I thought I was hot shit, he wanted me down a peg. I got distracted, he got in a lucky hit...my arm never worked right after , y'see. It was slow. Thought it was just taking a while to heal, didn't realize I was slipping until it was too late." He raised the gun again and held it, gritting his teeth, until once again it started to shake and the hand fell. "Tried to hide it, but couldn't keep it up. People realized I was getting sloppy. The wrong kind of people. Not good to have enemies with guns when you can't hold one yourself." 

Zenigata came and crouched next to him on the floor, quiet as Jigen raised the gun to the fridge a third time, pulling the trigger and making a little 'pow!' noise to accentuate the click of the empty gun. His eyes focused hazily on the place he'd 'fired' the shot. Zenigata quietly reached in and set his hand on the gun, drawing it out of Jigen's hands with no resistance. The man sat sprawl-legged on the floor, hands open. His head slowly tilted until it was resting on Zenigata's shoulder.

"You ever have a dream so perfect you never wanted to wake up?" he said abruptly. Zenigata chuckled.

"Yeah. Pretty often. I guess it's not that uncommon, huh?"

"Didn't used to have them, until after my arm got shot. What are your dreams?"

"Hm? Changes. I dream about...mmm, chasing someone different. Not working assassinations or murders all the time. Going to all these different places, fancy places, hunting down thieves instead of killers."

"I dream about this man. He's got this smile. And he's my partner. And we go different places and we steal things and we disrupt all this shit. And we don't always win, but he's got this. This fucking smile that lights the room up. That makes life worthwhile."

"Huh. Was he someone you knew?"

"No. Never met him in my life. But in the dreams he's the best thing I've got. He's an idiot but he...he makes me complete."

"Funny. I have a different dream. There's this man, but he's not my partner. I'm always chasing him around and he's always one step ahead. But I...I sort of don't want him caught? Not permanently. I want to catch him and then he'll get out again and I'll chase him again. It's real dumb, right? A dumb thing for a cop to want. And he's got these partners with him, sometimes. Or this woman who screws him over--"

"All the women I dream about screw me over."

"Hah. Can't get lucky even in your dreams?"

"Never said I wanted to get lucky with them." Jigen punctuated that statement by taking another heavy swig from the wine bottle, then let his head fall again on Zenigata's shoulder. They listened to the sound of their own breaths in the empty kitchen.

"It's funny. There was something weirdly familiar about you, the first time I saw you. I couldn't figure out what."

"If you say you've seen me in your dreams I'm gonna deck you, because that's some bottom tier pick-up line material."

"Then I won't, haha." Zenigata's arm slipped around his shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze. "Let's go for a walk, okay? By the waterfront, get you some fresh air and clearer head. After that….after that, we'll see what we feel like doing."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that…"

Jigen was silent as they moved through Paris's narrow streets, shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk. They passed by an old woman knitting on a balcony, muttering a chipper, 'One, two, one, two' as she counted her stitches and pausing to throw them a flirty wink.

At the waterfront he stood next to Zenigata, their arms almost touching as they watched the drunk tourists stumble along the railing and the current gently lap against the stone walls of the river, and he thought about holding Zenigata's hand.

Zenigata's fingers brushed against his, and he thought about leaning into him and seeping up the warmth of that massive body through his trenchcoat.

Then Zenigata leaned against him, cheek pressed to cheek, and Jigen thought about things he legally wasn't allowed to do at the waterfront.

"You, uh. You want to head back to the apartment?" the man mumbled, awkward and staring at his shoes.

"To sleep?" Zenigata asked, and Jigen could feel the man's mouth curve into a smile against his cheek. As they turned to walk back down the waterfront trail again they passed an old woman perched on the railing, quietly chanting 'one-two one-two' to herself as she counted stitches.

"Sure," said Jigen, giving the old lady a little nod. "For that too."

\---

Ishikawa Goemon XIII drew in a long, slow breath of cigarette smoke, and then brought his decades of work on body control to bear in resisting the urge to cough. He'd been told that eventually your throat became numb to the burn, all survival instincts worn down like calluses until you could resist the tickle of the carcinogens without flinching. He'd been smoking for the last couple years and still hadn't quite reached that point, unfortunately.

With his eyes closed he could still sense the presence of the woman entering his room, her slipped feet soft on the carpet. The light shifted as her arm raised and still he stayed focused on the way the smoke trailed upward from his cigarette. It wasn't until her finger started to squeeze that he took action.

The sheathed sword in his lap jerked upward as he rolled on one knee, bringing two inches of bare blade up out of the sheath. The bullet split neatly in half along the edge of the blade, its momentum severed as cleanly as its body, and it fell into two shards on either side of his futon. 

That was one thing that encouraged him. Even as its owner tarnished, Zantetsuken remained sharp and bright. When he was dead, perhaps it might find use in the hand of someone more worthy of its glory. Until then, he was too weak to give the sword up

"You know, most people just ask for a cup of coffee to get them up in the morning, not a bullet." said the woman, laughing like a dull bell as she approached him. She was a redhead today, and wearing a spotted minidress over stockings. 

"Caffeine is an unnecessary poison."

"And nicotine?"

"Also an unnecessary poison." Goemon did not dodge her next attack, which stole the cigarette out of his fingertips. She took a puff on it, then scowled.

"You need to get less shitty cigarettes."

"If I did not get shitty ones, you would be more inclined to steal them," Goemon pointed out.

"Point."

When the woman had first come to him, she had worn a kimono and black hair up in a chignon. He'd later find out it was a wig - she changed her identity so much that she kept her head shaved into a buzzcut, the better to swap between personas. Allegedly.

What had drawn him to her far more than her kimono and her willingness to play at being the traditional Japanese girl she thought he wanted was the emptiness in her eyes. The first name she'd given him was a lie, as was the first story she told about her tragic past, and the second one as well. There was a mask over this woman's face, and it was as beautifully crafted as any Noh theater mask, but behind the mask was nothing but hollowness.

It mirrored the emptiness Goemon felt behind his own eyes every morning, that had been growing for years until he was finally forced to admit there was nothing left of the honorable man he had once set out to become. He had cut down droves of people trying to take Zantetsuken away from him, only for a few cleverer men to realize the real power lay in being the ones who controlled the hand that controlled the sword. 

The woman tossed the cigarette back and Goemon caught it out of the hair. He'd started smoking as a small act of rebellion against his master, who felt cigarettes jarred with the honed samurai killing machine image he tried to sell to potential customers but couldn't stop Goemon from sneaking them from various henchmen and lieutenants. Goemon's own body was the one thing he had control over, and the tiny act of destruction was a way of marking his claim over it. This was his tree, even if it was rotten at the core inside a sheath of finely decorated bark, and he would carve what he pleased on it. 

It was the same reason for the tiny bit of scruffy stubble on his chin that was the result of months of attempting to grow a beard on a face that was fully disinterested in having one. Same, he imagined, for Fujiko keeping her true hair shaved down because it was the one aspect of herself she could control and keep to herself. But perhaps he was merely projecting his desires onto her. She was so very good at making men do that. Goemon didn't imagine he was immune to her power.

"Bossman is putting together a new target. An American nuclear engineer, he's here for a conference with his wife and oldest child. Something about national security, they were vague on the reasons why. We should be ready the day after tomorrow to do the hit."

"Ah. Another pointlessly simple assignment."

"Only because I set them up for you. Next time I'll slack off and make it harder for you, if it's going to be such a bother." The woman reloaded her pistol and slipped it back into the holster at her thigh.

"What will you do if you're too slow to stop that bullet one of these days?" she asked, her voice like honeyed poison.

Goemon smiled. "The same thing that happens to every other man you aim a gun at, Fujiko."


	3. Chapter 3

Zenigata woke up to JIgen going through his files.

"Hey, that's ICPO--"

"If you don't want me looking at them, don't leave them where I can find them."

"I had them locked in the hotel room safe!"

Jigen set out another file on one of the several stacks in front of him on the floor. "Which is basically the same as leaving them on the kitchen counter, those things are so easy to break into."

"How do you know how to crack a safe--and stop writing things down from them!" He tried to grab for the files and Jigen laughed, dancing away from him. Seeing the man smile made Zenigata melt, which coincidentally made him a lot less agile, and he wound up fuming in the doorway as Jigen set the papers out again.

"I'm being helpful, don't throw a fuss." Jigen tapped one file, a picture of a man with a strong jaw wearing a beret and camo pattern fatigues. "For example, I know that guy. Or used to know that guy, we were in the Foreign Legion together. And the one with the weird mustache"

"Eh?"

"Back when I knew him, the weird mustache guy worked for a group called the Fuma Clan. Bunch of assholes for hire, had a ninja thing going on."

"He doesn't look like a ninja."

"Nah, this guy was a merc, kind of a shit heel. Decent lay, but only decent." Jigen snorted and lay the photo next to a surveillance shot of a man with embarrassingly huge shoulder pads. 

Zenigata folded his arms and frowned. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I figure I might as well start earning my keep. This is the guy you're chasing, yeah? The Samurai Assassin?" He tapped the photo in the center of the kitchen floor. It was a blurry shot of a man wearing an oni mask with horns and a scowling fanged mouth, caught by a security camera as his sword tore through a mass of people.

"Yeah, for the last three years."

"What's his deal, anyway? They just calling him that because he's Japanese?"

"No. He goes real hard for the bushido thing. Does his murders only using his sword...supposedly he's skilled enough that he can cut through bullets with it, but I can't help thinking that's bullshit."

"He's got quite the kill streak according to your records, too. Sounds like a pretentious fucker."

"That's the weird thing about him. You think someone like him would be a blowhard, but what little data we have on him says he's the quiet type. No real drive, not interested in money. Fuma Clan has him now but he's passed through a couple of killer for hire circles...Tarantula had him for a while but we lost him when they went bust--"

"Oh, Tarantula's out of business, huh?"

"Yeah, their whole operation got nuked a few years back, after ICPO got a guy in there and--"

There was something about Zenigata's eyes that Jigen found fascinating when Zenigata got to rambling. It was like a light going on in a house that had been empty for a long time when he talked about his chase, after all the false cheer and light banter he'd been throwing at Jigen in the desperate hope of finding normalcy.

"Which one of them gave you that scar on your head?" he finally asked, setting a photo of a buff American with an open shirt down down and scribbling a name at the bottom of it.

"Huh? None of them." Zenigata laughed, awkwardly rubbing the scar. "Damndest thing. It was a car accident. I don't even remember how it happened. Just...I was driving, hit my head, woke up in a ruined car. Not another mark on me, just the scar."

"Huh. You oughta make up a better story about it, you'll have an easier time getting dates if you do."

Zenigata flushed red. "ANYWAY, about this Hyena guy--"

Jigen laughed at how eager Zenigata was to change the subject to literally anything but his personal life, stacking up Jigen's notes and stuffing the files back into the box. Embarrassing the inspector made him feel less bad about how humiliating last night had been for the both of them. 

Well, the start of it. The end hadn't been bad, really.

"I can have you talk to a police sketch artist, see if he can draw up some sketches of these guys and send me the scans. You won't even have to go in, we can do it over the phone." Zenigata brightened. "Oh! And that'll make you an official informant, too."

"Why's that got you peppy?"

"We have a budget for informants. You can get paid for it!"

"Huh. I finally get a real job and it's being a stool pigeon for the cops. Suppose anything's an upgrade from hobo."

Zenigata clapped him on the shoulder, laughing. "Baby steps, yes?"

Twelve hours later, the bedroom that Jigen and Zenigata had fucked in a night ago was covered in paper, strings, and the occasional bit of scotch tape. Jigen's information had cracked open a hornet's nest of new intel, and Zenigata left Jigen on the phone with a sketch artist while he went down to the station to work through everything. In between meetings he'd scribbled down notes, texting Jigen compulsively every hour just to make sure he was...still there? Still alive? Still real?

Perhaps it was too little sleep and too much caffeine, but there were points during the day that Zenigata started to wonder if Jigen Daisuke was just another hallucination. 

Despite that nagging sense, he was feeling more hopeful than he had in months. Maybe years. It wasn't zeal at the idea of finally nailing the Samurai Assassin, though anyone who committed that much murder needed to be taken off the street by someone. It was the sense of purpose in Jigen's gaze. He hadn't seen that much focus in the man's eyes since...ever.

Hadn't felt that sense of purpose in himself in a long time, either. 

The sketch artist looked exhausted when he finally got away from Jigen, shaking the cramps out of his aching hand. Zenigata offered to buy him a drink later and laughed as he took the pile of papers showing several beefy or stringy men, mainly Jigen's age or older, all of them with their own collections of scars. (In fact the list of known scars for some of them was so comprehensive that it left Zenigata with little doubt as to exactly how well Jigen had known them.) Each completed sketch and profile left Zenigata grinning wider and wider as he filed them into his paperwork--until the last one.

Zenigata sat at his desk, staring at the sketch and feeling the world go unsteady beneath his feet. Slowly, he stacked the papers up, with the last sketch on top, gathered his coat, and abruptly told the desk clerk he would be going home now.

His heart pounded in his throat as he took the train back towards the apartment. Zenigata kept fumbling for a cigarette and then putting it down again before it was lit, unable to stop feeling like his breath was stuck in the back of his mouth. He entered his home slowly, deliberately, not making eye contact with Jigen at first.

"Everything okay, Pops?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you gave us some real good info," Zenigata mumbled, hanging his coat up in the closet mechanically.

"Okay." Jigen didn't sound convinced, but he offered up coffee and the sandwiches he'd made for lunch, shoulders slightly hunched. Zenigata sat, and Jigen slid one plate across the dinner table. Zenigata slid the final police sketch back to him in return.

"Who is this?" Zenigata tapped the paper, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Hm?" Jigen leaned in, then laughed. "Oh, it's nobody. I had him draw that for a laugh."

"Who. Is. This?" Zenigata's voice got louder, each word pronounced carefully.

"It's not a criminal. It's nobody you need to worry about." Jigen tried to laugh it off, but felt his breath dying in his throat. He reached out to grab the print-out from Zenigata's thick hands. Zenigata refused to be moved. HIs face was as emotionless as a stone cliff.

"What's his name, Jigen?"

"He doesn't exist!" Jigen finally spat out. "Okay? He doesn't exist, never has. I made him up. It's just my brain coming up with some dumb shit in these stupid dreams--"

Zenigata's hand slammed down on the table, startling Jigen into dropping his cigarette. Jigen's heart fluttered. His hand itched to draw a gun he hadn't owned in years.

"If you made him up," Zenigata said, every word tight and strained through his teeth. "Why's he in my dreams too?"

\---

Goemon got up and dressed with the same methodical slowness he had for the last decade, with no acknowledgement to the man angrily pacing in the open doorway of his room.

"The target's been moved. That shithead cop from ICPO interfered again."

"Ah," said Goemon, as he carefully tightened the straps of his hakama. His employer smacked him hard on the back with his cane, though Goemon didn't flinch at the blow.

"Don't 'ah' me like you don't give a shit. Their work is our work, and this cop's in the way of it. Fucker doesn't know his place."

"Ah," said Goemon again, not changing a note of his tenor.

"I want you to take him out, Goemon."

"For the usual rate?"

"You don't want revenge on him? He's been chasing you for years. Ruining our plans for years."

Goemon stared back at him blankly, giving the other man the impression that he was talking to a doll. "The usual rates?"

"I...fuck, shit, sure. The usual rates. You don't do anything for the fun of it, do you?"

"I do not."

Everything felt dull, these days. Even the blade of Zantetsuken, as if in sympathy to its bearer or perhaps in disgust at him, felt less sharp when he lifted to take another life. 

It made the sharpness of the strange dreams that came to him in his weakest moments even more potent by comparison. Dreams of wielding his sword to a purpose. Dreams of doing strange, stupid things with it - cutting open bank vaults, carving diamonds, slicing train tracks into new patterns - and laughing at the results. Dreams of someone clapping him on the shoulder and telling him he was amazing, and _believing_ it.

Fujiko came to walk beside him as he headed down the hallway again. She was blonde today, her makeup adding a sharpness to her face. Perhaps she had been on another mission last night. "So you're finally hitting Inspector Zenigata, huh?"

"That is the assignment, yes."

"He's staying here in Paris. I'll get you the address."

"Ah."

Fujiko shot him a sidelong glance, then looked back up the hallway to make sure they weren't being spied upon. "No regrets? I hear he's an honorable man, as cops go. Capable, too."

"I have destroyed more powerful men than him. And he is irrelevant, in the end." Just more meat for his blade to cut.

Just another worthless object.

\--

The coffee was thick and bitter, usually the way Zenigata liked it, but he could feel it leeching the moisture from his already dry mouth. 

Why were two men who'd supposedly never met before dreaming about the same man?

"Maybe it's some weird Jungian thing," Jigen suggested. He put his cigarette to his lips and took a deep drag of it. "Maybe tons of people dream about a man who looks like this." The sketch was still laying on the table but Jigen had pulled his chair around to Zenigata's side of it, as if they were both policemen interrogating the sketch about its crimes. Jigen was leaning slightly against Zenigata's shoulder.

"I don't think so." Zenigata twisted his cigarette around in his fingertips. "Jigen...you ever hear of the red string of fate?"

"Isn't that a romance thing?"

"Doesn't have to be. Just means that people are bound together somehow. Destined to meet, for good or ill. I've always had this feeling like something was missing in my life...like I was searching for something but didn't even know what I was looking for. That feeling of loss, you talked about...when the dreams seem so real and so perfect that the world you wake up into feels more like a dream itself, when you want to cry because you've lost that dream for a waking world…I know that feeling. But seeing you on the street, bringing you back here, that...that made it ease. Just a little. Like I was putting something right that had gone wrong."

Jigen tugged his hat downward, hiding his gaze from Zenigata as he slouched in his chair. Zenigata wet his lips, trying to gauge the man's reaction. "Did that--"

"Yeah. Yeah, I felt it too," Jigen cut in. His words were slow and torturous but he was forcing himself to keep talking, to not let shame force him back into silence. "For me too. I just thought it was because I was getting three square meals and a shower, y'know, but...it feels right, being near you. You feel...more right than anything else I've done in a long time. I think if anyone else had invited me back, I'd have told them to piss off, but something in me said I could trust you...said being near you made sense." He trailed off again, embarrassed to admit anything about the world felt safe.

Zenigata studied the sketch again. The man had big round eyes and a wide, easy smile that spoke of mischief. His ears stuck out to the side and he had dark, short-cropped hair with sideburns that ran all the way down to his jawline. He wasn't particularly attractive, in a conventional sense, but the ache Zenigata felt whenever he looked at the sketch was unmistakable. 

"Wonder if he's a ghost of someone I killed," Jigen mumbled. 

"Doesn't seem particularly vengeful. Maybe a spirit guide, or a kami, trying to get you back to the right path."

"What makes you think he's here for me and not you?"

They both gazed intently at the sketch, as if waiting for it to get up and explain itself,but it stayed a static image. 

"Let's...he only comes in dreams, yeah? Let's sleep on it," Jigen suggested. "See what he does tonight."

"Right...uh. You want the couch again, or…"

"I mean. I wouldn't say no to a little 'sleep aid', if you're offering." Jigen laughed at the blush that spread against Zenigata's face at the suggestion. "And your bed might offer me a little more rest. If it's on offer."


	4. Chapter 4

Goemon resignedly pushed away the feeling of regret that crept into his heart the way he'd ward off a waiter with an unwanted drink. Zenigata was just another policeman, no more or less important than any other he'd struck down. The man did his job and seemed to have more honor than Goemon, but honor was no longer his concern. One more death upon the scales was irrelevant.

His zori-clad feet were light on the fire escape of Zenigata's building. The man lived alone and Fujiko had reported seeing him come home earlier in the day. At this late hour he would be asleep (all the lights were off, at least that he could see through the window). He would ideally die without even waking up. It was the greatest kindness Goemon could give him. 

Zantetsuken slashed out once, twice, and took out the window of Zenigata's kitchen. Goemon carefully caught the shard of glass and gently set it next to him on the fire escape before it could shatter, then slipped inside. With one hand on his sword hilt, he carefully paced through the apartment, slowly turning the knob of the bedroom door. It was pitch dark inside, but he could make out the shape of a body in the glow of the alarm clock. His muscles tensed, the man already beheaded in his mind.

And then a figure on the other side of the bed sat bolt upright, eclipsing the alarm clock.

"What--"

Goemon could have taken the man's head off easily. In any other situation, he would have done it without breaking a sweat. But the shape of that face haloed by the alarm clock's glow, that beard and shaggy hair, it hit something deep in his psyche that he couldn't explain.

That two second delay was all the bearded man needed to tackle the samurai assassin to the ground. Zenigata woke to the sounds of a struggle, furniture crashing and lamps smashing against the wall. Goemon recovered well enough to throw the man away, only to have Zenigata's powerful arms wrap and pin him down. A moment later the man had grabbed Zenigata's pistol and pointed it against Goemon's head. 

Goemon, mute, just stared at him. Zantetsuken, the sword he never set aside even to sleep, fell from his slack fingers.

"Is that...that's your man, ain't it, Zenigata?" said the man. He reached out for the oni mask and tore it off, squinting in the dim light at the face underneath. 

"Yeah…" Zenigata stared at him, disbelieving. "Didn't expect him to suddenly make it so easy--get my cuffs, Jigen."

"Jigen," Goemon repeated softly as Jigen went out of the room, turning on the lights as he departed. That was the name of the man. Jigen. His stomach was twisting.

"This is the all-powerful samurai assassin? You got taken down by a cripple," Jigen was saying, smirking at him. The expression did not irritate him, but rather made the man seem endearing. "And you were here for Zenigata, yeah? If you couldn't even beat me, how were you gonna beat him? You're really off your game, man."

Goemon remained mute as the man - Jigen - cuffed his hands, then bound his feet with one of Zenigata's ties. Zenigata was hovering around the edges, barking questions at him but Goemon had no attention to pay to the man. His eyes followed Jigen as unceasingly as if they were riveted in place, watching Jigen make coffee and sit to enjoy the sight of Zenigata interrogating their captured prisoner.

"Why do I know you?" he whispered, cutting off yet another round of Zenigata's shouted requests.

"Eh? Because I'm--"

"Not you. Him. This 'Jigen'."

Jigen shrugged, but there was something in his demeanor that said he was equally unsettled. "Dunno. Was a hitman once. Maybe we met through business."

"I have never seen you in my life. Why do I know you?" Goemon insisted, tossing his head to get his ragged hair out of his face.

"Been out of the hitman gig a long time, Mr. Samurai. If you knew me, I don't want to know you."

"Goemon." He sat up a bit straighter. "I am Goemon Ishikawa XIII." The name felt leaden on his tongue. He was so used to other people introducing him, or not needing to know his name at all...when was the last time he had even spoken the name of his heritage, his family, that he had so slowly and surely dishonored with his path?

"Never heard of you." said Jigen, cutting right through Goemon's identity crisis. "So you must be thinking of some other bearded has-been."

"I know you," Goemon said, and refused to answer anything further. It would be pointless. He would be arrested, executed on the spot, find some manner of escape, or one of the other Fuma Clan members would come to recover him. Regardless, words now would be pointless. Anything else Zenigata said bounced off his blank expression and eventually Zenigata stood back, swore, and ordered Jigen to meet him in the next room.

"I should call this in." Zenigata paced the kitchen, smoking his way through another cigarette. Jigen stayed leaning against the counter, keeping his line of sight with the doorway just in case Goemon decided to get up and walk away with the chair still tied to his ass.

"Jeeze,' he mumbled. "He's so young, but his eyes look too old. Feel like he looked older in the photos."

"Just has one of those faces, I think."

"That teenager peach fuzz doesn't help, either. He's trying too hard to look mature."

Outside the building, the street violinist was playing a slow early morning waltz on their violin. The sharp, slow notes wafted up into the hotel kitchen, adding an odd feeling of melancholy to their conversation.

"You sure you didn't cross paths with him at some point?" Zenigata asked. 

"I…" Jigen chewed his cigarette end. "I couldn't tell you where I saw him," he finally said, a suspiciously specific lack of denial. "So yeah. Maybe I killed his parents or something, who the fuck knows. Does it matter?"

Zenigata closed his eyes and then, very slowly, opened them again. He walked to the fridge and took down the sketch of the grinning man where they'd left it the night before, then went back to where Goemon was passively waiting for them.

"Ishikawa."

Goemon's eyes flicked up toward him, but he said nothing.

"I want you to tell me what the man on this paper looks like." He held up the paper, with the sketch facing away from Goemon, then let his hand drop to hold the paper sketch-down against the bed.

One eyebrow went up. "...do you believe I am psychic?" the assassin finally asked, after a long silent moment of trying to figure out the situation. 

"No. But I'm testing a theory here. If you ever see a guy in your dreams that you've never met….describe him for me."

Those sharp, dark eyes widened.

"You have--"

"Just describe him for me. I want to see if I'm right about this." Zenigata wiggled the paper and then put it face down on the table. "You tell me what's on that paper and I'll let you talk to Jigen."

Jigen's eyes darted off to the side but he stayed silent, hunched against the door.

Goemon's gaze fixated on the turned-over paper. His brow furrowed. "He is...he has large ears," the assassin mumbled. "Lanky limbs. He wears Western clothing, a jacket with a tie and pants.

"What color is the jacket?"

"Changeable. I have seen green, red, and blue."

"Purple?"

"Never."

"What else?"

"He smiles a lot. Smokes. Looks sort of like a...mm." Goemon rolled the last sentence around in his mouth for a moment before releasing it, unsure. "Like a monkey." 

The man by the door looked pale beneath his battered hat. Zenigata's fingers were white-knuckling around the handle of the coffee mug, even as he kept his face totally blank. Goemon allowed himself the momentary indulgence of a smirk.

"I do not believe you need to show me what is on that paper. Your faces say it well enough. Your Jigen has seen this man too, has he not?"

Zenigata launched forward and flipped the paper, slamming it back down on the table. Goemon didn't bother to look down. In the back, Jigen mumbled another 'fuck' and went for his cigarette box again. 

"I should turn you in," Zenigata said, starting to pace. "Just. Turn you in and forget all this."

"Will you?"

"Yes. No. Eventually. Maybe." Zenigata sat down on the arm of the couch, one hand to his forehead. "I want to know what the fuck is going on."

Goemon was leaning back in his chair, eyes closed. He looked the most relaxed of the three of them, which really only made Zenigata more annoyed. "Perhaps we were comrades or siblings in a past reincarnation with him, and offended against him in such a fashion that our next lives were cursed to misery."

"You pulled that out of your ass," noted Jigen.

"And you have a better explanation for why our lives have such suffering in them?"

"Fuck you, my life is fine," Jigen insisted, folding one arm against his body. Goemon noted how the other one seemed to hang constantly limp at his side.

Goemon's eyes narrowed at him. "You are both sleeping in the same bed in a borrowed apartment, there are alcohol bottles everywhere, your clothes are ragged, and worst of all, you have to deal with me."

"And dealing with you is such a misery, huh? Is being you that much suffering that it just bleeds off onto other people like a bad rash?"

Goemon looked silently into the bearded man's eyes. A long moment passed in silence before Jigen found himself forced to look away. "You should at least have a shave," he mumbled. "You look like a teenager trying to grow a beard in."

"We'd have to untie him for that," Zenigata pointed out.

"We'll have to untie him anyway. Eventually he's gonna need to take a piss and I don't know him well enough to hold his dick for him."

The way Goemon's pose subtly shifted indicated he already held such a need but had been too polite to ask for a break. "I will not try to escape."

"Yeah, I believe that about as much as--"

"I got an idea, Zenigata."

Jigen brought over the sword, ignoring how uncomfortable Goemon looked to see it in another man's hands. You'd think someone was holding his girlfriend, not his weapon. Jigen thought of his Magnum on the pawn shop counter, up for sale to any man who'd take her, and sympathized. 

"You swear on this sword that you won't try to either kill us or leave until we say so, Ishikawa?" he asked, unsheathing the blade and resting it against Goemon's thigh in what felt like a formal manner. Goemon gave a single, firm nod. 

Jigen swiped the sword up and the ropes parted before it as if Goemon had been tied up with string cheese. The samurai's hand jerked up and caught the sword by its hilt, hand overlapping Jigen's, and for a moment Jigen felt a shock of giddy thrill go through him. The simple feeling of skin against skin, the warmth that meant the other person was still alive.

Then Goemon simply bowed, leaving the sword in Jigen's hands, and went off to the apartment bathroom. 

"You really trust this guy, Jigen?"

"Yeah. I just couldn't tell you why. I know that sword'd mean the world to him even if nothing else did, though."

In the silence that followed, JIgen heard the sound of the street musician tuning their violin below the window. There was a soft 'An' a one, an' a two, an' a three…", a cough, and then the stream of music began anew.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mentions of suicide, suicidal ideation, and similar themes.

It was strange how comfortable it felt to be watching Goemon shave in the bathroom while Zenigata prepared coffee and breakfast.

"So. What's your deal?" Jigen asked, slouching in his chair as Goemon returned, damp and clean shaven, to the kitchen.

"My name is Goemon Ishikawa XIII, as I said. I am a direct descendent of the legendary bandit Goemon Ishikawa." Goemon reached out to touch the hilt of the sword with his free hand before taking a seat at Zenigata's tiny kitchen table. The sword had been sheathed since they made their truce but the man never let it go more than two feet away from him at any time. "This is Zantetsuken. I have spent my life in pursuit of the highest level of ability with this sword, and took up the life of an assassin to train against ever more powerful foes." His fingers tensed around the sword. Jigen noted, privately, that Goemon was holding it more like a child with a security blanket than a warrior with a weapon. He'd held the Magnum like that, once. 

"After my first master in that work passed away, I hired my blade out to other organizations. Yakuza, assassin groups, political agencies...at some point, though I would find it hard to say when, I realized that all my skill had never made me anything more than a tool. A weapon in the hands of more powerful men, with no honor and no control of my destiny. By the time I realized it, it was far too late to stop. I am unworthy of my sword, but my sword is all I have, and by refusing to put it down I further bring shame to it."

On impulse, Jigen reached out to touch Goemon's shoulder, to comfort him. He was trembling, and seemed almost on the verge of tears. Perhaps he would have, if tears were still left to him.

"I--my name is Jigen Daisuke. You knew that much. I was in the hitman business too, though only as a side thing. Mostly it was being bodyguard to one piece of shit after another. Hated it but shooting was what I was good at. Had a 0.3 second quick draw, back then."

Goemon lifted his head warily. "And how did you escape that life?"

Jigen laughed bitterly. "Escape? Buddy, I didn't escape, I got evicted. Signed up for a stupid pointless duel, bastard shot me in the arm, and the muscles haven't worked right since. Ended my career in seconds. I could have scraped myself up off the floor, maybe found a job in something else, but...I couldn't. Wound up on the street until Zenigata here took pity on me--"

"Wasn't pity--"

"Was too, fuck off. Until you took me home and got me cleaned up."

Goemon's head turned to Zenigata expectantly. Zenigata glared up at him over his coffee.

"What? My life is fine. I have a job, I have a good reputation. It's fine."

The pause drew out, until Zenigata pulled his hand over his face and hunched, muttering into his coffee mug.

"I--look, I adopted this kid I pulled out of the Seine about 15 years ago, okay? Oscar. His name was Oscar. Tried to do the right thing by him, but there was...he had some bad shit going on. Shit I didn't know how to handle, so I kept acting like it wasn't there, hoping maybe if I pushed him harder he'd have the strength to make it go away. Instead he...well, he made himself go away instead." His eyes cast over to the tiny shrine in the corner of the apartment, where the photo of the proud young man cast its icy gaze out into the living room. 

"I don't think I ever quite came back from that. Just...sort of kept going with work. Even though work didn't feel like it had much of a point anymore. It was just stopping small scumbags from hurting bigger scumbags, in the end everyone was scum."

By the time he was finished, he was bent over the table, face in his hands. Jigen found himself drawn closer to the man, resting shoulder to shoulder, as Goemon came in from the other side.

Goemon spoke up, his voice soft and reedy. Tender, almost. "You know of that feeling one has, when one is hungry but has other priorities so one simply pushes the pain out of mind until someone asks what you would like for dinner? Suddenly the hunger fills your full thoughts and you cannot even grasp why you were not obsessed with it earlier, as it built and grew below your knowledge? This emptiness, I think, was here before. It was not until I came here that I was fully aware of it."

"Is this...normal?" Jigen whispered. 

"I do not think so. I believe most people do not encounter it at all. It is a situation I have encountered only one other time in my life, with one other individual."

"Someone else? Who?"

There was a knock at the apartment door. Jigen and Zenigata flinched but Goemon, slightly smug, folded his arms and said, "Her."

\--

The woman calling herself Mine Fujiko liked to claim she didn't need a man. This was true, in that she didn't need a single, specific man. But men? Men, unfortunately, she needed. She'd taken too many chances, dipped herself in too many dangerous situations and gotten too deep in debt to ever feel like she could pull herself out of it, and like a drowning woman grasping for a lifeline clutched at whatever man she could get before their utility ran out and she was forced to jump for the next available one. It was a livable situation, but not a particularly pleasant one.

Her current lifeline, the samurai assassin, had been in his target's apartment for two damn long. As the men in her life went, Goemon wasn’t the worst, though that was one hell of a low bar. He was almost as disinterested in living as she was, which was pleasant in a dismal kind of way. He wanted a damsel to protect more than he wanted a wife, mother, or playmate (or anything more disreputable), and she obliged in that role, giving him little token ways he could show his masculinity in defending her. The whole thing was so damn rote she could do it in her sleep.

And now he was AWOL, for over two hours, and the idea of having to find yet another meal ticket when this one was so perfectly comfortable grated on her.

Fujiko had slipped in through another apartment’s window via the fire escape, narrowly dodging the cameras around the front of the building. She was wearing one of her more low-key wigs, a brunette bob cut that made her look anywhere between schoolgirl and coffee shop waitress. A great disguise for blending into the background, something she had to do more and more of these days. (Something she hated doing. Something she should have done more of at the start, before she got in so deep she could no longer see the surface.)

Someone’s girlfriend who’d gotten locked out, she decided as her cover story. Let the cop decide if she was truthful or a hooker, EIther way he probably wouldn’t expect the real answer to be ‘assassin’. They never did. 

Instead of that ugly split-chinned cop, however, what answered the door was a slim man with a beard and a fedora pulled low over his face. Their eyes met, frozen, even as Fujiko mechanically went through her prepared speech, and then suddenly he yanked her into the apartment and threw her against the wall. His hand went down between her legs and she was about to scream her usual ‘oh no I’m a distressed damsel’ scream (so dull) that would further arouse the sympathies of the cop, when she felt his hand going not where one would expect, but directly, to the pistol held tight in a garter holster. 

“You’re Goemon’s backup, huh?” he grunted.

“How’d you—“ He’d known it would be there. Gone right for it, like a dog after a bone. Fujiko’s mind raced, trying to figure out if this was one of the trail of men she’d left behind as she’d run, yet another mistake coming to chase her down. (Join the club, pal.)

“Because you always—“ They both stopped, staring stock-still into each other's eyes. Fujiko saw the man’s face burning with hate but also with need - not lust, if anything he seemed disgusted by her body, but his hand still stayed tight against her arm.

“Because you always kept your gun there. And I know that because.” He ran his hand through his greasy black hair, pushing his hat back further. Her hand reached up, despite itself, pushing the fedora back down again. Having it up felt wrong. Out of place. 

“Ah. Hello, Miss Fujiko.” Goemon was watching her placidly from the kitchen, with his intended target standing behind him looking like a confused dog. He didn't appear to be chained, or drugged, or anything besides a little more well-shaven than usual. The 

"Goemon, what the hell is going on here?"

"It is...a long story. Or perhaps a short one with many gaps in it."

"I'll put another pot of coffee on," Zenigata sighed.

Downstairs, at the foot of the apartment building, the street violinist sat with his instrument in hand tuning the strings. "An' a two, an' a three…" he muttered.

Down the street, he could see a seedy looking man in a long coat raise his cell phone and whisper out a message to his superior, a note on a mission failed. The storm was building. He raised the instrument to shoulder height and tucked it under his chin, smiling a secret smile to himself. 

"And Fujicakes makes four."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My personal writing rule: whenever you can't figure out where to go next, have ninjas attack.

There wasn't much time for a debrief after that. Fujiko confirmed the monkey-faced man, and that she'd never met either Zenigata or Jigen before except for the times that she clearly had. With her in the room the pull was stronger than ever, leaving Goemon to confirm that it must be a form of destiny that brought them together. They had just gotten down to a heated discussion over whether it was destiny or just coincidence, and if the monkey-faced man counted as some sort of spirit guide or a past reincarnation of a dear friend (or in Zenigata's case, the result of brain trauma), when the front half of the building exploded.

"Oh, hell, couldn't they have given me another hour?" Fujiko grumbled, diving behind the kitchen table. Jigen scrambled for a gun he didn't have, swearing as Fujiko cowered against him.

"What?" 

"You know, the usual ' you failed once so we'll kill you if you fail twice' gig?"

"You didn't think to tell us people were going to come kill you?"

"Well, until now it didn't quite matter because _usually_ Goemon just does his damn job." 

Goemon had the decency to look embarrassed about it, until another explosion took out the balcony and the thankfully empty storefront under the apartment. "Was that a damn rocket launcher?" Jigen yelled.

"They don't want to get too close to the Samurai Assassin, and their aim isn't good enough to just snipe him from here." Fujiko yelled back.

"Mine is. Was. Mine was." God, this was the worst time to be having an identity crisis. Underneath him the floor sagged and tilted, and the couch they were hiding behind began to slide forward. Goemon clambered forward and did his best to deliver a formal bow on the rapidly increasingly incline of the apartment.

"Jigen. May I raise my sword again, in defeat of these interlopers?"

"Do whatever you fucking want!" Jigen yelped, trying to grab at what he could. His bad arm clutched for support and then abruptly released, unable to deal with the weight of his body. As he fell Zenigata grabbed for him, dropping his Colt in the process. Jigen managed to get his fingers roughly around the barrel of the Colt and held on for dear life with his good arm. His shoes hung ten feet above the twisted, sharp metal of the building's blown-apart fencing. Even from such a low height, it'd be enough to turn his body into swiss cheese if he fell on it.

Almost everyone outside was fleeing, and those who couldn't run took shelter in the nearby nooks and crannies of the shops. From his dangling vantage point Jigen could see maybe two dozen people in dark outfits and facemasked, mostly armed with machine guns. One in the back was patiently reloading his missile launcher, while a man in a long cloak kept a jeep-mounted minigun trained and constantly firing on Goemon. For a moment, Jigen stared at the way Goemon's sword deflected the bullets so effortlessly - beautiful, like the man himself was beautiful even with two bloody corpses at his feet. Beautiful, but that arm would get tired long before the bullets ran out.

Fujiko had run, because of course she had, leaving only a blonde wig and her cardigan on the floor. Zenigata was trying to keep him from falling. And as he had been for years, as he'd always been, Jigen Daisuke was fucking useless.

"Just let me go, Zenigata. You need to get out of here." His damn arm didn't even have enough strength left in it to shake the old man off. 

"You think I'm letting any of you four go once I've caught you?" Zenigata insisted, grinning in spite of himself.

"What?" That feeling that something was wrong, that feeling that he'd forgotten something...even with the death he'd been longing for staring him in the face, that feeling consumed his thoughts.

Jigen looked down again, to where that weird little street musician was standing next to the debris. He weakly waved the Colt, trying to tell the man to get out of the way of his impending corpse, and the man shook his head, grinning.

"How many bullets you need there, Jigen?" the musician shouted up at him, as if there wasn't a firefight going on around him. His voice was different from the voice Jigen had heard calling out for tips every evening. It was shrill, nasal, and enough to make his heart stop. "Take the damn shot already!"

"Take the...but I can't…" He hadn't fired a gun in…

Years. Days. He could hear the roar of the next missile coming towards him. Jigen looked down the expanse of his arm to a gun he remembered pawning for liquor and he remembered cleaning and reloading only yesterday, and he remembered the weight of it in his right arm that had been so withered that he'd gotten his best friend in a headlock with it this morning and--

Jigen looked up past the brim of a hat unbattered by time and the elements, snapped up his right arm and took out the incoming missile with a single shot from his Magnum. The explosion threw him backwards and upwards into Zenigata, bringing the rest of the floor crashing down onto the first level. 

"Jigen?" Zenigata rolled and covered him with his body, trying to examine him for injuries. "Jigen what--Jigen, why the fuck are you smiling?"

Jigen let out a long, exhausted, joyful breath, as if it were the first time in years that he'd exhaled. "I think it's starting to come back to me, Pops."

\---

More running. Damnit. She'd hoped this man would at least last the year before she burned through her good luck with him. Fujiko's feet pounded down the sidewalk, through the tiny angles and back alleys of the Paris walkways. Already, she was mapping out an escape path in her head - where her hidden funds were, where she could get a new disguise, what few allies she could count on for at least one more favor. Beyond it all she just felt so tired. Tired enough that she was only running out of habit rather than any desire to preserve her own life.

Running had always been what she did best, after all. It was what you did when you had nothing else left to do. She didn't stumble until someone called out to her from a nearby cafe, the one patron left sitting casually at their table while the rest had run for cover. He was an older man with a thick beard, a bit chubby underneath his sweater-vest and blazer with padded elbows.

"Where are you running to, Fujicakes?" the old man called out. "Just gonna leave the boys behind to do all the work?"

"I'm--"

She paused. One hand came up to touch her head, then to thread fingers through the long, lush auburn mane that flowed down to her shoulders. She'd had it dyed back in February, hadn't she? But…

"Oh," she said, then turned and shot the ninja running up behind her in the head. Right. Couldn't let them have all the fun. Fujiko tried to shout some cocky comeback to the man at the cafe, but when she looked he was already gone.

"Huh," Fujiko mumbled, and then turned to race back up the way she came. 

At the apartment, Goemon was still deflecting the horde of bullets from the jeep-mounted machine gun. She blinked, and the blood splattered in thick gouts around Goemon's feet became delicate ribbons of cloth surrounding concussed men who'd been stripped down to their underwear by his blade. Typical Goemon. If killing was too easy, he'd up the ante and spare them instead. 

He spun, deflecting a bullet to take out the ninja creeping up behind her, and she swore she could see the hint of a contented smile on his elegant features. 

The minigun slowly ground to a halt as Jigen took out the final machine-gunning ninja and asked, under his breath, what the fuck a bunch of ninjas were doing in France. The man atop the jeep looked around him, at a street strewn with injured and unconscious bodies, then stared at the four of them in horror.

Not just fear. Specifically horror. As if something was terrible wrong with the fact that they even existed. It struck Jigen that he was out of dress code from the other ninjas. Instead of black with a mask and excessive shoulderpads, the gunner wore a long cape with his hair combed down over one eye.

"This isn't right, this isn't how it should be," he mumbled, backing away from the minigun. "I'll have to--to fix it. Go back again. Maybe further back this time?"

"You better come down from there, mister," Zenigata called out, waving his handcuffs at the man. "Whoever you are, this is very illegal!"

"No, no." He didn't seem to be paying them any attention as he stumbled down from the top of the jeep, muttering to himself as he inspected his watch.

"Hey, he said hold it!" Jigen shouted, aiming the Magnum at him. 

The man turned his gaze on them, drawing himself up to his full arrogant height. "You pathetic primitives, do you honestly think I don't have protection against something as inadequate as your--"

And then the old woman across the street, the one who'd been sitting on her balcony with her needles and her yarn patiently knitting a shawl every single morning of every single day that Jigen had lived on this block with Zenigata, dove from her upstairs window and engulfed the man in a colorful lacework net. 

"Do you ever shut up? Christ, Kyosuke, you're as bad as your damn partner," she muttered, giving him a few hard kicks and twisting him even tighter into her shawl-slash-bondage-weapon. Her voice was definitely not sweet, kindly, or elderly. Not particularly womanly either. The same voice as the street musician, shrill and sarcastic. "Frigging monologuing pretentious…"

The man in the net screamed in existential dread. At the end of the block, the man Fujiko had seen at the cafe tore away his beard. By the ruins of the apartment, the street musician pulled off his wig. The knitting lady grinned, then tucked her fingers under her chin and pulled away her entire face.

Jigen heard Fujiko gasp. Even with the buildings crumbling around them, he found himself unable to move, unable to breathe as the trio of figures converged in front of him.

All three faces - identical, down to the round eyes and big ears - were the man who'd smiled in Jigen's dreams.

"Right," said the man in front of them, kneeling with one leg on the writhing mass of yarn and irate human. "Now let's get this mess cleaned up, already."


	7. Chapter 7

Bars should be banned from having mirrors over them, in Zenigata’s opinion. Especially right behind the bar. The last time that you needed to really do some deep self-regarding was when you were trying to get wasted.

He kept catching glimpses of himself, between drinks, and wondering where that little crescent-moon scar had gone off to. The memories were fading, overwritten by the memories of what-should-be, but they didn’t die fast enough for his taste. The booze wasn’t helping either. Everything between that bombed out street corner and chasing Lupin down a motorway in a racecar was a blur, and everything before that just felt questionable.

A man slid up to him at the bar and Zenigata didn’t even need to check the mirror to know who he was. He knew the damn thief by scent at this point.

"Lupin."

"You have no idea how nice it is to hear that name on your lips again. Especially after all the trouble I went to in order to get the band back together. Going back over and over...ugh. You could at least sound a little more enthusiastic, though.”

“What do you want?”

Lupin laughed nervously, running a hand through his hair. Zenigata found himself checking to see how much grey was in it. Over and over...how many times had Lupin gone back to fix and tweak matters, rearranging the world back into a configuration that pleased him?

“Not that I usually expect gratitude out of you, for all that I do for you, but you seem a little bit cranky tonight.” 

Zenigata raised his hand and called for another drink. He’d probably had too many already, but who gave a damn. “Shouldn’t you be off partying with your friends? Celebrating the triumphant return of the Lupin gang?”

“Yeah, we did that. Still doing it, actually. Didn’t feel right without you.”

“I’m not in your damn gang, Lupin. I’m not even your friend. Hell, I'm not even your ally.” He waved again, and the bartender waved back in a ‘hold your horses’ gesture.

"No. You're my fulcrum."

"The hell does that mean?"

Lupin sighed. He reached into his pocket and tapped out a cigarette, lit it, and then regarded the glowing tip as if it would impart some secret wisdom onto him.

"Look. I'm not gonna explain time travel shit to you. Or memory resonance, or the ripple effect, or whatever. You wouldn't get it because hell, I barely get it, and half of what got done was by versions of me that got overwritten and don't exist anymore. Like...you've heard of the butterfly effect, yeah? Bradbury and shit, one tiny change throws the whole thing off?" He took a drag of the cigarette, not meeting his own gaze in the mirror. "Imagine you're trying to get the butterflies to form the shape of the Mona Lisa and it's just you, going around poking things back into place, and every time you get some butterflies settled another bunch get ruffled…"

There was a faraway look in his eyes that made Zenigata wonder exactly what Lupin had seen, and how much time he'd spent trying to put things back in order. The man had a brain that worked in ways even the brightest minds at Interpol couldn't begin to comprehend. If anyone could force a timeline back into place, it was Lupin...but the strain it must have put him under couldn't be comprehended.

He must love those three very much.

"Anyway," Lupin said, grabbing Zenigata's drink as it was brought to him and downing half of it in one swallow. "That's why I got rid of the time machine after we ditched Kyosuke Mamou and his partner. Didn't want to deal with that shit. It's too easy and it's too hard all at the same time. But what was I saying--"

"I'm a fulcrum."

"Right. Fulcrum. The thing you use to lever other stuff. You were still an Inspector, still basically about in the right place. Everyone else got drawn to you. I gave 'em little nudges where I could. Didn't want to be too obvious, I had Kyosuke Mamou keeping a watch out for me the whole time, and I needed to get him trapped at the same time as I brought you four back into place or he'd just ruin the whole thing again."

"How many times--"

"Don't ask me that." The words were hard and sharp, like a door slamming shut. Zenigata held up a hand, waving him off. 

"Fine, fine. So I'm a fulcrum. You used me to get your friends back."

"Noooo, see, you're doing it again." Suddenly that dark demeanor was gone, replaced by the grinning monkey that Zenigata had chased into hell and back at least five times so far. "Acting like I stole something from you. What I stole was you. All of you. All _four_ of you. Stole back someone trying to take my most precious possessions and now here you are again, all better, no dumb facial scars and no cruddy job just chasing shitheads from place to place. You're all back where you were. You're all better. I _fixed_ it." The word 'fixed' came out hard through his teeth, like a command.

Zenigata's fist tensed. "And you've got Jigen and the rest now, and I'm still alone. I know it's how it's supposed to be. Don't ask me to be happy about that. I won't even have the memories after a while, will I? It's already fading."

"They'll linger, if you hang on to them. It'll just feel like...like it was a movie you watched, or a story someone told you. Like it happened to someone else." Lupin poked at one of the coasters, prodding it around the bar. "I let most of mine go. Too confusing, not very fun. But what you hang onto, you'll keep. Like with people, you know."

Zengiata scowled and stole his drink back. "Don't know if I want them. Don't know if I want to know what I've lost." 

"You haven't--eh, hell with it." Lupin made a little 'tsk', sucking in air through his teeth. "Would it help if I showed you this?"

He tossed a folder across the table. Zenigata glowered at him and picked it up gingerly, as if it was slimy.

The first photo that fell from it made him drop the folder again. It was a man with a patchy beard and slender limbs, trying his best to hoist a piglet into a truck. His features were delicate and elegant, despite the rough clothing he was wearing, and his dark hair hung shaggy around his face.

Oscar. Even after years apart, even in peasant clothes and bad grooming, he'd know that face anywhere. It was his fucking son, after all.

"You changed the timeline?" he asked, voice weak as he tried to pick up all the papers, tried to look at every photo at once. "How--"

"No. No, I thought about--Jigen asked me to. But I looked it up, to figure out where he died and he...he didn't. Looks like after the whole clusterfuck with Count Almeida's people went down he just ran. Guess he needed some time to clear his head, but...looks like he at least put himself back together. These got taken at a farm in Provence last week."

Zenigata's hands were shaking as he went through the other photos, taken likely by a drone. Oscar carrying hay, Oscar feeding animals, Oscar dozing under a tree. There were addresses at the bottom of them, which Zenigata committed to memory. "Is he...is he happy?" Zenigata whispered. It has been years. Decades. He hadn't even reached out. "Does he want to be let alone, after all this time?"

"Dunno. You should pay him a visit. He looks happy enough, but not so happy that there's not room for one more person in his life." Lupin finished Zenigata's drink and set it on the bar, next to a couple of Euro bills for the tab. "Just like us."

"I don't fit in your life, Lupin." 

"I'm very stretchy." Lupin winked at him. "Anyway. My time's up, you got another guy in line for you."

Zenigata carefully tucked the photos back into the folder and held it close to him, as if it would vanish in a moment. "How does someone with a time machine not have enough time?" he grumbled. 

"Told you, I destroyed the thing. Nobody gets to steal us from each other again."

"Us?"

Lupin jerked his head in the direction of the bar door. Jigen - Jigen with two strong arms, a filled-out healthy face, a clean hat, and both hands stuffed awkwardly in his pockets - was slouching in the doorway, not making eye contact. At the sound of Lupin's soft whistle he looked up, flushed a bit, and finally came over. 

"Hey, Dais--Jigen," Zenigata muttered, flicking a glance up at him and then looking down again, tensed.

"Hey, Pops." Jigen, equally, was having trouble making eye contact.

"You, um. You doing okay?"

"About as well as can be expected."

"Same, yeah."

Zenigata's eyes scanned what little he could see of Jigen's face beneath the hat. Some part of him hoped he wouldn't find any trace of that warmth and vulnerability it had when they'd shared a bed in a world that had never happened.

"Okay, you two get to catching up. Don't stay up too late - or if you do, at least make sure it's for the right reasons." Lupin kissed the tips of his forefingers and pressed one to Zenigata's cheek, the other to Jigen's as he stood and left the barstools.

"We--" Zenigata tried to get up and follow him, but Jigen pulled him back down. Zenigata's hand came down on Jigen's to remove it but he found he couldn't break contact with him, stronger as he was even with Jigen's arm all healed up. The contact of the warm hand was too much for him.

"So you still remember, huh?"

"Yeah. Yeah, how could I--of course I do. You're hurrying to forget, I imagine."

"I'm a thief, pops. We don't usually give up valuable things."

"Yeah, but you don't horde garbage." At Jigen's scowl, he hurried to add, "Look, I'm sure you want to go back to how things were, right?"

"No."

"And the faster you--wait. What?"

"I'm a thief, Pops. Call it immoral, but we tend to be greedy. Want to take everything we can get our hands on and keep the best for ourselves." His other hand reached out and smoothed over Zenigata's.

Zenigata looked around for anyone who might be watching, judging, and found that the place was empty except for three people - Lupin lounging at another table, the busboy with sharp cheekbones and soft dark hair, and a bartender whose sparkling gaze and smile should have been recognizable even if she was wearing a binder and pretending to be a man. All three were converging at Lupin's table, watching but not interfering.

Lupin had hunted him down and lured him into a damn emotional ambush. And now Jigen was holding his hand. Jigen of all damn people, who he could remember crying on his kitchen floor over a lost Magnum whose bulge he could clearly see under Jigen's jacket.

"I don't want to lose this world, but I don't want to lose you. Or what we had." Jigen's rough drawl stumbled over how soft his words were, as if each had to be carefully handled when spoken lest they warp into something terrible. "I don't know what it'll be like moving forward. You got your job, I got mine. But we got...we got all the time in the world to figure it out, now. If you want me. Only if. This isn't gratitude, or pity, or anything. It's just greed. But if you want this greedy thief, plus or minus three more...he's yours for the taking."

He looked out nervously from beneath his hat, waiting for Zenigata to say something - to keep him or dismiss him. Zenigata's silence was long enough that Jigen almost just got up from the table and left completely, before Zenigata pulled the gunman into his lap and silenced further protests with a long, hard, hat-knocking-off kiss. 

"Not sure I could give any of you up if I tried," was all Zenigata could say when they parted, nearly laughing, tears of relief welling at the corners of his large, round eyes. "I don't think the universe would let me, anyway."

"That red string thing, huh?" 

"Yeah. Got us wrapped up tighter than any of my handcuffs." Zenigata held the lanky man tightly in his arms, drinking in the warmth of his body and the scent of cigarettes that lingered on his suit. The feeling of something that was no longer a dream, or a memory, or a mirage. 

"Well." Jigen reached over and pulled his hat to him, tucking it back onto his head. There was a warm, satisfied look on his face that would have made Zenigata cry with its purity, if he wasn't already crying from all the other stuff. "Good thing I'm into bondage, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am ENDING 
> 
> this stupid FANFIC 
> 
> with a BONDAGE JOKE
> 
> and i have NO REGRETS


End file.
